11/14/2005 @ 12:00AM

iPod Nano $250

In the digital age it’s survival of the fleetest.The iPod embraces this contest with a vengeance.

My shiny new iPod Nano is as sleek and sexy as a little black dress. It packs a startling amount of sound and a thousand songs into a case so slight you forget it’s there, thumping away at the end of a snarl of thin, white wire and Milk Dud earplugs. For me, it was love at first hype.

But this is a fickle attraction. Each time Apple issues a new model, the one in your pocket suddenly looks dumpier, older, conjuring up a gadget geek’s most dreaded feeling: I’m so dated. And in the handheld world we are what we reap–we pick products for how they make us feel about ourselves. On a recent subway ride to work, as my iPod Shuffle (150 songs) on a lanyard around my neck played a random set, I looked up and got a jolt of envy and shame: There was the new Nano, tiny and gleaming–and playing in the hands of another rider. Days later my Nano upgrade was complete, my Shuffle shelved and my envy replaced with pity for those with the iPods of old.

Apple has sold more than 30 million iPods in 17 models since the first one hit four years ago. It took two years to unveil the first six iPod entries; the latest eight came out in less than eight months. Apple has thus set a world speed record for innovation, product cannibalization and self-inflicted obsolescence, waging an unrelenting assault on itself in pursuit of the Next New Thing.

The Nano debuted on Sept. 7 to lots of hoopla, a blitz of iconic TV spots and the raves of iPod fans. At $250 it has 4 gigabytes of storage, a color screen and a housing that, at 1.5 cubic inches and 1.5 ounces, is only 20% the size of the original. Nano wipes out Mini, launched 22 months ago.

Just 35 days later Apple unromantically upstaged my little beauty by unwrapping the latest iPod ($400 for 60 gigs, a twelvefold storage increase in four years at no extra cost) and wowing the world with its ability to play video. This jump, though, may leave me behind yet again, despite my iPod addiction (having owned or given away eight). In television the bigger the screen, the better. Instead I will content myself with the Nano, turning my older 40-gig iPod into the centerpiece of my home stereo and deploying the Nano as an ever-present sound track for street life.

When the rapper 50 Cent revs up the syncopated, sitar-laced strains of “Just a Lil Bit,” the li’l Nano soars. And when he unleashes the pulsating beat of “Outta Control” (“I did my thang in the club. Every chance I get, I tear it up. Dance floor jam-packed, I got ‘em goin’ goin’ outta control”), the Nano makes me feel like I’m right there with him, young again and hangin’ out. It’s rather thrilling.